A trimmed-down Star Citizen 3.0 alpha is coming this summer

You can stop fidgeting about what might or might not arrive in Star Citizen this year: Cloud Imperium has released its promised development roadmap for the rest of 2017. The studio stresses that quality will trump everything, that estimates are merely estimates, and that the schedule isn’t all-encompassing, but the words “3.0” and “persistent universe” and “planetary tech” have been enough to send Reddit into a tizzy of excitement.

It’s also sent the community into a tizzy of concern, as it appears the original plans for 3.0 have been trimmed down to get it out the door this summer, with many of its features pushed off to later patches later in the year. According to the newsletter, this is partly the result of Behaviour Interactive ending its subcontract for Cloud Imperium (you MMO folks will know it as the studio behind Eternal Crusade).

1) I’ll believe it when I see it.
2) I gave this game $80, what feels like 4 years ago, and have nothing to show for it but some crappy hangar I can walk around. Ugh. Whatever. I’ll just go play Wing Commander…

We get to have multiple convos about this, but some of their claims of what the game will feature are getting downright fanciful. This isn’t No Man’s Sky kind of debacle, because no multiplayer is kind of a fatal, cardinal sin right there. But we’re starting to get into NMS kind of territory as far as meeting claims and satisfying expectations.

Melissa, I’m at the point with this that I almost don’t believe Chris Roberts is even sane. What if he’s like that dude in A Beautiful Mind, and we all bought into some ficticious and impossible game? The stuff he talks about… does the technology even exist? What did he bring in? 38 million? F that, I’d retire and say F y’all’s game.

Gather round my grandchildren, that’s right come in close i want to talk to all you little whipper snappers. So what do you all do for fun?
We play video games!!!
Ahh, with controls and what not?
Of course Grandpa…geez. What did you do for fun grandpa?
Well kids back in my day, we kinda had video games too but we didn’t really play them, we just bought pretend space ships, and games that didn’t really exist.
WTF Grandpa you serious?
Oh quite serious little ones, I’m just so glad all you little gamer’s got a whole lot smarter than we ever were, least you get to buy real games that exist and actually play them.
/Kids whispering among themselves… Naw Grandpas just old, think about it, no one could ever be that stupid to buy stuff that doesn’t really exist.
We love you Grandpa!

BTW – You could apply the above to the current state of development for “Elite:Dangerous” as well.

And while SC does allow backers to buy other ships; all you need for full access is a “ship package” (low cost starter packages run between $45 – $60) and another $15 add on cost if you also want access to “Squadron 42” when it’s released. So, yeah for $60-$75 you can have access to everything in SC.

With E:D I believe a player who didn’t spent what $350 for the full E:D Alpha phase and Lifetime access to further updates when it was offered at the very early stage of E:D development – an E:D player has to pay $60 for the base game, plus $30 every time they release a new update? Yeah, what a deal.

Nah that’s totally incorrect.
You could buy the Premium Beta + Lifetime Pass for £100, which breaks down to £50 for the base game + 6 months of beta and then another £50 for all the other expansions.

Elite + expansion is £40 not £60 ($90) like you claim. Besides when has been paying for expansions a bad thing. virtually all MMOs sell their expansions this way. Do you expect developers to work for free? :)

While you might argue that you only need to spend $45 on Star Citizen the company needs well in excess of $150 million to make the game and somebody has to pay for it, even if it isn’t you, which means somebody has bought a load more things to start the game which then leads to all the P2W claims etc…

With E:D I believe a player who didn’t spent what $350 for the full E:D Alpha phase and Lifetime access to further updates when it was offered at the very early stage of E:D development – an E:D player has to pay $60 for the base game, plus $30 every time they release a new update? Yeah, what a deal.

Does anyone else feel that this “open development” method brings more fatigue than having everything developed behind closed doors?

Out of sight, out of mind. Less stressing and overhyping and more pleasant surprise when it’s completed and published. This only keeps reminding everyone that the game is still not close to being done, which personally makes me care about it less and less..

I backed this game on KS back in the day (when was that anyway?). I no longer even care to be honest. I read news about all the plans, release “schedules” (good one!), convoluted additions, unrealistic expansion, tech resets, $200 spaceships (LMAO!), and just chuckle…

The main thing is the removal of planets, originally they intended to have the whole of the Stanton system fleshed out so you’d be able to land on any of the planets, moons or whatever.
Now we’ll have just 3 moons and the planets will be coming individually in 3.1, 3.2 and 3.3

Stop pretending the whole original game scope have not changed to two AAA games, one solo and one MMO, with tech enver seen elsewhere. They are clearly doing very well for a company the siuze of 12 guys and 6M$ end of Nov 2012 and now.

People who have been obsessively following it (like me, I get all the emails!) realize that 3.0 is Alpha 3.0. People who haven’t see ‘Star Citizen 3.0’, like in this article, and think it might be further along than it really is.

That’s marketing working as designed. Misleading with plausible denial.

And then they know the suckers who have already bought in will do their defending for them since it’s ego defense. Again, a giant part of marketing is to get your Pepsi, Coke, Chevy, Ford idiot army.

Pray tell, what are the ‘more important things’ here? They promised a single player campaign 5 years ago that’s 3 years overdue and they’ve shown no signs of delivering yet. Are the ‘more important things’ a couple hundred dollars worth of virtual ships that desperately need self-justification?

They could deliver 10.000 thousands planets and moon next week with procedural generation. They prefer to deliver 3 planets with contents, then add more till end of 2017…. the world is collapsing really :) And do use scam or vaporware rather than trying to make sentences :)

You didn’t just back a single player Wing Commander style game, you backed both that and the Open Universe game they are making.

Also comparing the most infamous “developer” who are more concerned with harassing his competitor nearly to the point of a lawsuit than working on his own game, to a developer who has several critically acclaimed games that are considered groundbreaking even today is only going to get people to laugh at you.

To be fair, Chris Roberts did “alter the terms of the deal”. Originally, Star Citizen was going to release the single-player Squadron 42 and if there was enough funding, later release the, ahem, expanded universe, aka the persistent universe aka the multiplayer game. That was standard in video games in the 1990s. You play the single player video game and when finished, play the multiplayer version..

However, to release the single-player game first, would have required making some compromises that would have to be undone to link it to multiplayer persistent universe and around 2014, once it was known they had more than enough funding for the persistent universe, CIG decided to not make the compromises and opted to go for building the persistent universe and have S42 a subsection of it–putting the multiplayer element first.

Plus, according to various news reports there was some major miscommunication with the studio doing the First Person Shooter module resulting in months of development lost in 2015. Worse, it was the element through which the mmorpg part of the game was funneled. Also, their Road to CitizenCon video gently discussed how that element was folded into their Manchester studio, directly under Erin Roberts’ supervision, that was more experienced and faster in getting products completed.

It was a change to make the game bigger, grander, better than what was originally discussed. Was it the right call? This doesn’t happen all in a vacuum, Destiny, Elite Dangerous and No Man’s Sky went that route of releasing a limited game and expanding later.
— Destiny had a ton of hype from the folks behind Halo of a huge epic scifi saga as the lore behind their game. However the game as released was limited, somewhat shallow, repetitive and the story was vague to the point of being threadbare (reportedly there was some huge last-second decision to dump the overwhelming majority of the lore with next to no time to replace it for its scheduled launch).
— Elite Dangerous was almost the mirror image of Star Citizen. It was an updated version of a beloved 1990s space sim, but it released with a limited game that was later expanded. Many fans liked it, but some found it boring or dull with lots of long travel times between missions and lots of grinding. While there’s been a ton of excitement of late about character creators, multi-crew and first contact with (hostile?) aliens, there are still complaints about grind and not enough fun.
— No Man’s Sky almost perfectly encapsulated Star Citizen in microcosm, lots of hype and lots of controversy. Part of the hype was a lack of official communication to counteract lots of rumors by fans giving a raised false expectations of what would be in the game at launch. Worse, when the game at launch failed, ahem, massively, to live up to the hype, the company went radio silent about how’d they fix things and waves of players sought to return the game to Steam for a refund. Recently the game has added patches of what many said should be at launch but there is also fury at the lackluster result of a major quest chain: What’s at the center of the galaxy? Many players have turned to Star Citizen and Elite Dangerous to finish what No Man’s Sky had started.

Ultimately, it’s a game, not the Second Coming of Christ. You don’t have to play it, back it and if already did, you can request a refund–if you’re one of the early ones who backed it. If you’re like me, who purchased an Aurora (LX, with rich [Corinthian?] leather), you went in knowing it was multiplayer / persistent universe first and single player / Squadron 42 eventually. Like it or hate it, but I strongly disagree it’s some scam to take your money. There’s been far too many developments–if only for the PVP elements in Arena Commander and Star Marine, that for some reason seem to be routinely ignored–to believe that. However if you want to, then that’s on you. You have the right to your opinion–no matter how wrong I believe it to be … and vice versa. ;-)

To be fair, Chris Roberts did “alter the terms of the deal”. Originally, Star Citizen was going to release the single-player Squadron 42 and if there was enough funding, later release the, ahem, expanded universe, aka the persistent universe aka the multiplayer game.

If you want to be fair you should consider all the facts.
Roberts didn’t just “alter the deal” as you say.
This change was done with the consent of the backers at the time.
There was a poll that had over 80% voting yes to continuing with the stretch goals and expanding the scope of the game.

Your last paragraph confuses me a bit though, as it seems directed at me, but your wording give the impression that you somehow thing I am either dissatisfied or think this game is the second coming(your wording seems somewhat contradictory)

I never thought, said or implied that this was somehow the second coming, I was merely pointing out to another poster how his perception of what he backed was not what he believed it was.

I am an original backer from the days before Kickstarter(they originally started on their own website and KS was not added until 1-2 weeks later.
I have put a fair amount of money into this(will not post numbers as people go ape over it), and at the current point in time I believe they will get the game out.

I don’t agree with everything they do, and think they may be trying to do too much and some of it could be left for after launch.
I can of course voice my opinion about this and have on many occasions, but its up to the developers if they want to listen or not to what I and others like me have to say
I am also aware and have accepted that it will likely take a good deal more time still before they are done(how much I prefer not to speculate on).

Also watching the development of this game as well as reading and participating in discussions in places like this here has given me a much greater understanding of how game development works and as a result a good deal more patience for the time it takes to make a game, especially one of this scope.

Oh, I was pointing out that they did alter the terms of the deal, but I agree, it was pretty well publicized and if folks were really upset, they could have requested a refund.

Folks complaining after the deal was changed seems weak. No one was forced to buy in. I was mentioning some trying to put the game on a pedestal just so they complain when they find it’s not perfect? Nope. It’s just a game.

And, yes, I disagree with some things CIG does, mainly flubs in communication. It’s 2017 and mom’s are still making the same basic mistakes in communication. One of the most common rules I still see CIG & other moms break:

Reveal bad news early–and explain it!

Don’t have the Squadron 42 video ready for CitizenCon? Tell us then. Don’t wait several days until the day of the reveal as you’re about to play the video live–after an hour delay!

Also maybe explain why the sand worm video was so important you diverted major resources from S42 video–the one you promised a year in advance, the same year you’ve been sued for delays by an expert in video game delays. Maybe.

The Road to CitizenCon video was great in explaining after the fact, but if you were only days from greenlighting the S42 video maybe you move heaven and earth to get it out in the THREE FRELLING ASININE MONTHS remaining in 2016 after CitizenCon. Maybe.

To be fair, I haven’t logged into the game since 2015. I’m waiting for Alpha 3.3, and the arrival of the Carrack (“My Precious!”) and how to buy it with in-game currency. Also when the loader actually does only differential downloads instead multiple gigs of the entire game.

So, to sum up, yes, I am agreeing with you, mostly. To the extent I disagree, even then, some people are blowing things way out of proportion to common sense and / or reality.

One year late, two year late, okay, that happens. I was not at all buying into the Open Universe, I was buying a Single Player Wing Commander Campaign, which they could easily have delivered if they were even trying. The massive expansion of scope came AFTER they got so much money that they realized it’d be much more profitable to milk the MMO morons for eternity.

You’re just getting super pissed about bringing in Derek Smart because it hits way too close to home. I’m only in it for $40, so I can afford to be salty and note the similarities while laughing sadly into my gin and tonic.

Just because you backed it for “X” doesn’t mean that “X” will be finished first.

They have a ton of stuff to work on, including A-Z. X is no more important to the development than Z or Y. You backed everything, regardless of what you personally backed for. They never said SQ42 would be finished on 2/2/15 or 4/2/17 or any other date. Estimated delivery didn’t include the launch date of the game.

And I love how you say “if they were even trying” like they are sitting around on their ass, coding nothing and working on nothing. Star Citizen was always billed as what it is, not just a single player campaign.

Make all the excuses you want. I paid my money for something they were pushing very hard at the time and made very little effort to deliver. If you want to rag on me for being stupid for believing them, mea culpa, that’s complete true, I was totally suckered by a bunch of con artists.

One year late is excusable. Two years late is questionable, especially when I know they pulled people off SQ42 to work on SC once they realized selling unreleased ships was a money fountain. At this point, it’s a joke.

And this point my $40 gives me infinite bitching rights till they deliver it – you keep defending that giant faceless corporation to the death, I’ll keep ragging on them till they deliver.

You said it better than I could.
But I would not bother with this person, it appears to be one of those individuals who will think they know better and resort to personal attacks and insults when someone points out how they are mistaken

Nah, its really not true. Its your opinion. They would have to make an announcement stating that they are cancelling sq42. Just because something doesn’t meet your time frame in your head or what you want done doesn’t make it false.

You should really learn to temper your own expectations and personal needs.

You are insane though if you think Star Citizen is shits like all of these other failed kickstarters. Have you played the game at all lately? Its far from vaporware.. Its the real deal. I used to be skeptical as well. I backed the game and am glad I did. I don’t play now as I am waiting for the game to be more fleshed out.

CiG will deliver on their project. If it doesn’t live up to your obviously lofty expectations then thats your situation to deal with.

You used ‘special snowflake’ and were pretty quick with the ‘cuck’, so no, I don’t think you’re above using ‘insult fotm words’ at all, whatever a fotm word is. Is that like a beta cuck? Or is that why the whole ‘alpha’ thing is so touchy? The whole alpha cuck dissonance?

You’re also getting progressively more aggressive and incoherent as the night goes on, so I’m guessing that’s just the alcohol.

Yes, I’m a backer, so I take a shot at playing it every 3 months or so. It is nowhere near a game yet. It’s 0.3.

And my ‘lofty expectations’ were only ever that they deliver the single player campaign they promised. It is indeed my situation to deal with, and my way of dealing with it is ragging on CiG till they deliver the single player campaign they could have delivered two years ago if they’d been trying at all.

And then going ‘well, at least I’m not as deep into it as these guys who feel compelled to defend it to death.’ There’s my $40 right there.

Yeah, I know, it’s ‘alpha 3.0’, but that’s an oxymoron in itself unless you had a real version 2.0 previously. Notice how often they say ‘Alpha 3.0.0’ on that page (0 times) compared to how often they say ‘Release 3.0.0’ or just ‘3.0.0’.

I don’t think it matters how long it takes. Unlike most MMO’s I have seen in the past 15 years the graphics and tech will still be cutting edge when it releases. Which is something for a game with this long of a development cycle. This is also the rarest of opportunity, for an independant studio to have such resources and no restrictions. It is worth the wait and any risk, for even a chance at achieving such a grand vision in a truly massive next gen space MMO.

I don’t even know what this game is/supposed to be anymore. What are the odds that in 2020 Roberts just reveals the entire thing has been a project to develop the most realistic game development simulator ever and all the backers have just been unwittingly playing it?

me and my backer buddies anticipated summer for a while now. take more issue with teh comms/marketting of it six plus months ago vs what they are communicating about it now.

but then what comes to mind is sandi the other week tweeting a photo of an sq42 model in production which only begs the question why that model wasn’t done year or more ago when they were pushing sq42 presales ahead of a 2016 launch.

it’s hard to take these people’s communications at face value even when it all seems fairly reasonable to do so. because they’ll then go and prove that their past reasonable communications were nothing but bullshit that they had to have known those dates would not be met or the game state they were showing was not actually anywhere near a state to be deployed while playing it up as if it is internally already.

and it’s frustrating. i probably play the ongoing current state of the game more than is worthwhile cuz i quite enjoy what there is to it.and i’m looking forward to 3.0. but as with any other developer it’s frustrating when they bullshit us consumers in ways like CIG continually and habitually does.

so while i anticipating for a while that summer would be a reasonable release window for 3.0, now i actually second guess that now that CIG are saying that themselves.

but then what comes to mind is sandi the other week tweeting a photo of an sq42 model in production which only begs the question why that model wasn’t done year or more ago when they were pushing sq42 presales ahead of a 2016 launch.

They contracted S42 to another dev and that other dev fell through. This is a common story with SC.

Whatever it is that makes SC stuff take way longer to dev than any other game is going to kill them.

Really? How is about 4 1/2 years to this point LONGER than any other game?
SWToR – 6 year dev cycle to release

ME: Andromeda – 5 year cycle (for a single player game – and most think the lackluster animations are a result.)

CIG is developing BOTH the ‘Star Citizen’ MMO and ‘Squadron 42’ concurrently; and yes, CR spent a year in pre-development with about 10 people doing the tech demo they showed at the start of their Crowdfunding campaign in October 2012; but even after the crowdfund campaign was success they had to actually START a company (rent office space, get equipment, hire staff, etc.) <— And that's not something that can be done in a couple days. Full development probably got going around Jan/Feb of 2013.

So, yeah, but IMO for a couple of games of this scale with a lot of tech that's never been put into an MMO, etc; I don't think them getting to the point they are with SC Alpha 3.0 in June/July of 2017 is all that slow a pace. (and yes, CR actually pitched a MUCH smaller game in the Kickstarter and Crowdfund campaign he ran originally. That said, when he started expanding the scope, the majority opinion of Backers who were voting and expressing opinions were: "Yes, do it./ Great idea.")

Would I LIKE to have the full games available now? You bet. But given the scope of what they're going for, I don't think they're going slower than normal.

Also, if you think no game development makes mistakes or decides to rework key features as they iterate on things (especially new game tech); then you don't know the computer programming industry. To think it's just 'write the code/push it live, and it works as expected (bugs not withstanding) is just naïve.

I’ve lost count of the people who 2-3 years into dozens of major gaming projects are busy calling foul, crying that the game is dead, etc. The patience aspect of this industry is in need of a serious overhaul, starting with a kick in the pants to most of the customer base who are busy whining about things taking too long in development (when to be honest most games take that long, just maybe not with high visibility all the while.)

So sick of people whining about thinks taking too long with games in early access/alpha/beta/crowdfunding. Now, other complaints, sure. Noting that the team has missed a lot of deadlines, without going overboard on what that means (in this case, it means they had no clue how much work they were in for) is fine as well (AKA, no hyperbole about longest development ever… especially since FFXV and a recent game with Horizon in the title just came out with over 10 year dev times.)

I’m… just a little frustrated with the lack of thought on display by people who go off about ‘long development cycles’ without perspective.

no cr did not pitch a much smaller game in the kickstarter. all the mmo stuff and hundreds of systems and so on were there from day 1. it takes literally 2 minutes of looking at the kickstarter page to see that.

and the reason why people complain about the time it’s taken is purely on CIG and CR giving overly aggressive release dates over and over and over again year after year. has nothing to do with anyone else but CIG themselves.

the actual feature creep and scope creep is stuff like drink mixing mini games and mining and farming and planet surfaces and shit like that. but the full fledged mmo stuff has always been pitched. and CR was quite vocal about getting all that done plus sq42 in 2012 through 2014, even after it became clear to casual observers that it wasn’t going to happen.

ORLY? Or did you not see on e the ORIGINAL Kickstarter that the PU was the $3 million dollar stretch goal and they were originally thinking it would come online maybe a year after Squadron 42 released.

The original pitch was for a ‘spiritual successor to Wing Commander and a full persistent universe’ but when you read what was on the original KS and CIG site SQ42 was always planned to be released first.

Yes, later, as the crowdfunding ballooned – CR said he believed the SQ42 and their PU could be released at the same time; but that was after the crowdfunding ballooned AND was also done with the support of the backers who were closely following and participating in the Polls on the site at the time.

there was feature creep, but the game was originally sold as being a full mmo on kickstarter go look:

i don’t think the 2014 eta was originally a lie until later after. but they were bullshitting pretty heavily in 2013 and 2014 when very little work was getting done but every week on WMH they were making big shows of the devs hard at work to inspire backer confidence.

feature creep is stuff like landing on planets, drinking mixing minigames, mining and farming and so on. and all that stuff came much later on and is reletively recent.

I would not go so far as to say the 2014 ETA was a lie.
I think its more a case of them being overwhelmed with the success and letting the stretch goals go on for too long.
I also would not rule out the possibility that given that CR had been “out of the game” for as long as he had, had left him a bit rusty in estimating just how long development would take.

As for little work being done in 2013 and 2014, just because we didn’t see a lot of progress in that time does not mean they didn’t make a lot of progress.
Most of what they did was work on the games engine which would be mostly code and little that could actually be seen on the surface.

afaik sq42 has always been completely in house at the UK studio run by erin roberts.

i’m gonna need a citation for this. which isn’t a plus for CIG given their history of throwing contractors under the bus for problems that have been shown to be clearly on CIG’s shoulders.

but frankly i’ve heard nothing of the sort that SQ42 delay has anything to do with third parties. and everything indicates that they no where near ready to launch due to their own in house work being incomplete in multiple areas last xmas when they communicted the state of sq42 for the first time at that time.

I can’t even track this anymore. It is so confusing. The older comment model on MOP being crummy now doesn’t help.

Maybe I’m thinking of the shooter aspect?

This is just what happens. They fuck up so many things consumers with no real attachment just think they’re fucking up everything. I used to think the four years for my diploma was a decent measure. Four more years for the degree. I can’t think of a single game I played in that time period where the distance between hearing about it and playing it was more than a year or so.

God I hope they stop the insane dev and just put out what they promised to be out three years ago. Their community of whales only lasts so long and they’re cutting into where they should be gaining new customers to maintain revenues.

If SC doesn’t cut costs huge they’re done. I bet you anything CIG has huge layoffs within the year.

Yeah sure… prophecies of Doom already given twice in the past 3 years by the other Master Troll clown I won’t name…. in the meantime CIG gathered more than 70M$. Also you clearly never participated to kickstarter project when you say no more than 1 year between hearing about a game and playing it.

star marine was delayed because of communications issues and wasted work with a third party.

3.0 delay is in part due to behaviour moving on to a new project that isn’t sc.

sq42 delay is due to SC’s own work not being done in time. maybe ai could be said to be third party but the third party ai company moved on ages ago iirc.

and yes it’s alot to keep track of when paying attention to it at all. which is why i let irc buddies read all the comms and watch the videos and communicate to the rest of us in chan what is important and interesting they’ve said week to week. as well they tend to find gifs/screens of the relevant interesting footage tidbits and share it.

Everything is happening because of a repeated, reported-on pattern of CSG not being able to hit timelines. The original delivery date was Oct 2014.

I choose to think that they COULD have met that promised delivery if they didn’t feature creep.

I bring up X and I’m wrong… but you bring up Y where that is true and then… we repeat. This feature wasn’t done… it was because of Y studio… We seriously don’t even give the same to Bioware for ME:A.

There’s a DISTINCT pattern of promises going unfulfilled when they had a distinctive air of “trust me” before.

The point is that you can only ask for trust, and then break it, so many times. This is where SC is at and I don’t need to be “into” the game to see how this is something most people are hesitant to enter into.

To be frank, I know DK a lot better than you do and we don’t disagree as much as always enjoy engaging to coming to a good conclusion in the middle. I’m not “fuck DK” but I know that the last DECADE of interacting with this dude has shown he can take it and fire back with good points worthy of consideration.

DK isn’t wrong. I just have a really strict idea of methodology… and for most shit DK’s opinion actually matters a TON. [edited for better clarity and respect]

Looks like they’ve given themselves a fair amount of wiggle room on everything but Networking and Backend.

Digging in a little deeper, it seems that the Networking story that extends the timeline the most is a refactoring that unsubscribes players from updates on distant objects, and it’s explicitly marked as a “stretch goal” for the release. So, I wouldn’t expect it to delay the release.

The Backend project, on the other hand, has an epic called “Diffusion Subset for 3.0.0”, which refers to their cloud hosting infrastructure. So, if there are any major holdups in the schedule, I’m pretty sure this is what will cause them. The servers have been hosted on AWS since forever, as far as I know, and I’m sure switching to Lumberyard won’t make their AWS integration harder, so I don’t think there’s a particularly high level of risk there. But, you can’t rule out weird stuff happening.

Let’s hope that the new 3.0 doesn’t get slimmed down further so that it makes an end of June release.

I can’t help but feel CIG only have themselves to blame if people are getting pissed off, they’ve been hyping up how wonderful their PG planet stuff is for a good time now with everyone anticipating it arriving in 3.0 due to those Citizencon slides, only for them not to achieve what they’ve been talking up. Oh well.

Just checked out their Kickstarter, even though there is time left, I just can’t bring myself to back it. Not because of any fault of theirs, just so hesitant because of how profound the SC debacle is.

Thanks for pointing this game out, I didn’t know about it before and will certainly keep an eye on it.

i’m actually a bit confused by some of the things on that chart tbh. there’s stuff that’s already in game and working fine for the most part on there. but maybe with some of it like say quantum jumping they mean the routes to pois.

well they’ve got tonnes of work going on asset production wise for sure. so yeah. i’m just saying in response to “it’s good to bring that work in house” that they already have alot of in house artists :P :D

“It’s also sent the community into a tizzy of concern, as it appears the original plans for 3.0 have been trimmed down to get it out the door this summer, with many of its features pushed off to later patches later in the year.”
============
How would anyone deep into that ‘community’ not understand that this was going to happen?

How does anyone who has any kind of extensive MMO game playing experience not realize that this happens to 9/10 MMOs regardless of type, budget and/or development staff, let alone one like SC that kept promising more and more to an already incredible amount of opening promises of revolutionary features?

This happened to the ESO, SWTOR, FFXIV (first version), WildStar, Warhammer Online communities and more, except those communities all seemed prepared, grounded in reality and understood things promised wouldn’t actually be delivered due to scale, time and expertise constraints.

Seriously, people are getting “concerned” over what is essentially a reality like the sun rising daily is a thing still happening?

The level of self-delusion for someone in this community to assume that everything the Star Citizen staff has said since the first dollar was raised as truth and ‘going to happen’ to now panic must be incredible.

Heck, there’s a laundry list of producers and monetary types pushing this with single player games that aren’t really ready… going back to at least the mid 1990s.

I mean, SC has issues with setting a realistic timetable for the project, but gamers whine about development time regardless of what is being done (even fast paced releases of quality updates get this treatment when you find them in MMOs! Two months? Next time make it two weeks slackers!)

So… where I think that CIG has a little self-reflection to do on timetables and how to deal with development so as not to overpromise speed, I also think the problems there are universal to far too many gamers without the patience to complete a level of frogger because forget waiting for the right spot in traffic they are just going to go!go!go!

idk, it couldn’t have anything to do with the overly aggressive deadlines they sell to backers to sell more ships with fancy vertical slice demos that backers convince themselves are indicative of actual gameplay that is fullt formed right now internal and not actually vertical slices constructed for the purpose of conventions to push revenue generation in the accompanying concept/limited ship sale that goes along side those demos, could it be?

i mean alot of us called bullshit that it would actually be ready by xmas, just because we’re used to CIG’s overly aggressive ETAs, but alot of people defended it back then, and now pretend like they didn’t actually sell us an xmas release date.

and alot of stuff that is mentioned as not done yet in the demo is stuff they’ve implied heavily in the past or have shown as being ready for prime time already.

so no it’s not on backers/fans for being concerned, it’s on CR and CIG for routinely bullshitting us on the state of development.

How would anyone deep into that ‘community’ not understand that this was going to happen?

Mostly because the communication from the studio has been about how they were looking toward a launch… not a stripped-down and minimal launch.

The actual rate of development here is scary. Any game other than Star Citizen would have run out of money years ago. This is the kind of thing they should have done two years ago but they weren’t there because of the feature creep.

At the end of the day, when Star Citizen hits what it should be we’ll all be on the next-gen of games already. That’s their issue. They can’t afford to maintain such expensive development without a release. And surprise that release is going to be MVP (Minimally Viable Product).

By the time we get around to actually playing SC we’ll all have become sick of hearing about it. The space nerds (myself included) will love it, but it won’t get any bigger. In fact, they fucked up by not releasing while interest and hype was on an upturn. The delays just mean that by the time it is actually released and playable we’ll all be tired of it.

Not to mention people forget that it’ll be a f2p model at release. That means their revenue generation is far better before that floodgate opens than after. They’re so stuck on their “pre-order” model that they’re killing chances for their game to gain large market penetration by squeezing blood from a pre-order stone.

I traced this because because I was curious why I thought that, myself.

It comes from their model. Full stop. You buy a ship and then grind for modules that can be purchased for cash. Their whole system has a cash-value on it. Maybe that changed, but it was the “rental” system.

So this is actually like the same kind of model CoE is pushing that is a nice way of shoehorning f2p marketplaces into box-price games. It won’t work. People hate being nickle-and-dimed to keep playing after they made a purchase.

You seem to have the wrong idea, here. I think SC looks amazing but anyone with half a brain can see how such a great project got derailed by the upward-thrusting revenues.

By the time SC releases as they have promised we’ll all be hooked on the next big thing that didn’t take a half-decade of open dev.

i take alot of issue with their current revenue model given the criticism people have for other early access games with cash shops or dlc in early access…

but i have no idea where you’re getting this stuff from.

the last time they talked about this stuff for post launch revenue everythign would be available for credits and credits would be the only thing they sell.

the most recent addemendum to that was they trippled the anticipated grind time to earn new ships.

but they’ve never talked about direct item sales post launch.

it’s just that some of us think they will keep selling ships post launch. not that they’ve said they will. let alone whatever modules is supposed to be in the context your claiming.

anyways there’s alot of issues with an early access game selling stuff that amounts to gear without anyway to obtain said gear through game play in the foreseeable future and no plans to add progression of that nature to the game play at all given to backers yet.

and there’s some murmurs about how post launch revenue will actually look like compared to things they’ve said in the past years gone by given some of the things they’ve redacted from back then since.

but here’s the actual model for post launch as stated years ago of which there has never been any other version of this model stated by CIG:

box copies of the game that come with one of a small number of starter ships to chooser from,
dlc for squadron 42
limited amounts in a time period per account credit sales
with everythign in the game being available for credits in game.

that’s all they’ve ever said on teh topic for post launch sales. nothing about module sales or anything like that.

there is a ship weapons/etc shop now that costs real money but it’s rather poorly implemented and alot of the items don’t work and the rest are poorly described. but that’s said to be for testing purposes

I just told you where. It is a combination of seriously not caring about the details of their model and how it was presented to non-hardcore SC people.

All that said, if I can play SC within the next three years as intended I’ll be surprised. I’m not “against SC” as much as I know that they’re running out of money and this dream-dev will die unless they can find a way to reinvigorate their revenues when their focus has been so laser-sighted on pre-orders.

I mean, hell, this is your own argument you’ve made many times in SC threads. I got this from you, dude, because it makes a ton of sense and the numbers line up in actuality.

no i agree they’re acting more and more desperate to bring in new revenue, we’ve got increased incentives to subscribe to their newsletter, we’ve got warbonds sales (basically give them cash for ships instead of using existing store credit/melting ships for credit to buy the new ships and get a discount), and throwing out LTI on certain things to push sales that these items priced at $20 are often referred to as “LTI tokens” and so on.

i was just clarifying what their stated plans for post launch revenue model is and added what some of us think they may actually do instead.

I don’t think, based on their plans, it was crazy to think SC was f2p. I seriously think such was said on MOP before.

A game I don’t follow and has a complex revenue model? Yeah, I make mistakes.

I’m way more worried that they’re going to run out of money after what seems like five years of fucking-about. I’m worried about their model, which caused a lot of “yay” in 2012 but is so passe in 2017.

And I keep saying that the last time I tried a free-fly I glitched onto the outside of the station. Maybe I’ll give another shot now.

i don’t think i’ve ever seen anyone on massively say it would be f2p. i know i haven’t myself. it’s confusing why you keep saying that.

idk what’s so complex about the model they currently have. it’s a classic all game items are sold for cash shit that old f2p games used to have but with b2p model (which b2p in this genre’s primary differentiation from f2p is you pay up front as well as have a cash shop).

and the primary differentation from most other games with this model is the extreme price points on the items they sell in their shop.

with a secondary being that you can upgrade through an overcomplicated system your ships to other ships, or melt ships/packages for credit to spend on other ships.

the model as it stands now is:

buy base package with a basic ship
“CCU” to the ship you want
or buy additional better ships.

and then with a few high end super expensive ships you can buy fancy rooms and shit type models

and the voyager direct store is basically ship gear like weapons and stuff that has useless descriptions and half the items don’t actually work at all.
which uses middle man currency of credits that will be used in game at launch.

the complex and confusing parts is generally in terms of communication adn the upgrading systems.

and their communications are a massive cluster fuck of out of date info, poor web design and massive word count padding and too long repetitive video spam every week.

tho they’ve improved their one video series to be much meatier and useful in what gets communicated which is nice but i still let my irc buddies watch them and let me know what’s new.

as it is when i clicked the link to this communication today there was several walls of text i just scrolled past because whoever writes their text comms it literally hurts my head with the word count padding. LOL even skimming takes too long compared to normal writing.

We’re so different there. I tend to hate video/audio and will read text. Video/audio is me being changed to the vocal cadence of someone whose ideas would be better received if they came as a whole and not as a “presentation”.

I read fast. And the time it takes me to read a “wall of text” is minimal compared to suffering through someone talking.

I see videos and say, “nope.” I see text and I say, “Okay, I can do this at my own pace and it isn’t going anywhere.”

I’d prefer walls of text to people talking slowly. I don’t have 30 minutes to focus on what someone says when it would take me 4 minutes to read the same.

yes and as a veteran backer and tester I know what goes into a games development. The issue is kids these days are into instant gratification and think the games they play just pop up over night. There are some games that have taken well over a decade to be released.

what does instant gratification have to do with chris roberts giving overly aggressive clearly bullshit dates for releases over and over again and even denying there are delays even after the fact there’s going to be delays is undeniable?

it has nothing to do with anyone else by chris roberts and CIG. no one else is at fault for CIG’s bullshit ETAs they give or failing to meet them.

First off, you think the dates they are giving are overly aggressive, I can understand and respect that.
But can you also see the other side of the coin?
The side where if they had given longer estimates you would have people complaining about them giving dates that was too far off or “not aggressive enough” to use your terminology.

Second, we see time and again how publishers are setting similarly if not more aggressive timelines, but instead of letting the developer continue to work and finish things if they cant meet those unrealistic timelines, they instead just tell them cut or reduce features of the games and so they can get the game out the door as fast as possible for the quickest possible profit.
The result are half finished and buggy games which in many cases are completely unplayable until they are fixes, fixes which often can take weeks if not months to be released, if at all.
Of course the publisher don’t really are about that, they just want to sell as many copies as possible before moving to the next game.

So here you have CR and CIG, who are damned if they do and damned if they don’t so what the hell do you want them to do?
Do you want a half finished buggy and unplayable game as fast as possible, or do you want a “as bug free as possible, fully done and working game that you can enjoy many hours of play in?

If you want the former, you can go buy a game from EA, Ubisoft, Activision, etc.
If you want the latter you have to learn to have some patience and let the developers do their work.
But you can have it both ways.

These are games I have played myself and have seen just how buggy hand unplayable they were when released.

The Black Ops series still have not fixed many of these bugs as well as a number of significant performance issues making them near unplayable in some cases.

ESO I remember had bugs that literally prevented you from continuing your progress, because you could not interact with NPCs to pick up or turn in quests which in turn blocked access to nearly all other quests in a region.

As for setting realistic dates, while I agree with you that in theory this would be a good idea, what is realistic dates really becomes ambiguous seeing as what people consider realistic varies wildly depending on who you ask, which is evident in this comments section alone.

A person near the top believe they have taken too long already, where as you seem to think they should take longer.
So what do you consider to be realistic dates?

That you seem to want them to take longer I am interpreting from your comments about how they missed most their estimates and want them to set more realistic dates, so feel free to correct me if I misinterpreted.

i don;t think they should take longer. i think they should stop obviously bullshitting customers.

they’ve got 144+ million in revenue now and they’re talking like they’re 5 years out from a bta with little to show for it and actively acting desperate for more revenue. red flags everywhere in worse ways than when they were obviously in development hell 2 years ago.

I’m curious, how they are bullshitting customers as you say?
What are these red flags you are referring to?
And what is this development hell you claim they were in 2 years ago?

From your comments I get the distinct impression that you don’t really understand or want to understand just how much work is involved in a project of this scale and the money required to do it, despite your claims otherwise.
Or that you are one of those individuals who simply do not have the patience to wait for something to be done properly, but just want it now.

we know they bullshittd getting work getting done for over 2 year early on, or do you wanna go back to the narrative of excusing the timeline becuase they weren’t ready yet despite smaking a show of being productive towards their original stated timeline for teh first year after kickststarter?

i don’t think you you really know what goes into game development. and that this is your first rodeo. if it were anything otherwise you’d recognize the red flags left right and center with this project.

or are you just one of those fanboys who apologize and sells w/e given game project like you make commission for doing so?

and again the truth is i still play this game more than you do. so get off my balls. this article is two days old. you don’t need to bother me with this shit days later hours gone by ffs.

So basically what you are saying is that because we didn’t see much progress for 2 years they were not getting much work done for 2 years.

This is exactly the kind of response I would expect from someone like you.
Because you didn’t see it, it didn’t happen, which is just complete and utter bullshit.
And you know it, you just don’t want to admit it, you just want to be right no matter what.
And the fact that you cant even answer those 3 simple questions says to me that you are just trying to change the subject because you don’t have an answer.

And if you want to think of me as some kind of fanboy and apologist for pointing out the flaws in what you say using facts, reason and logic, then you are welcome to it, I really could not care less.

I for one prefer to keep an open mind, try to understand what is really going on rather than go around fear mongering and let the actions speak for themselves.

i mean this is the esxcise from your camp. that they didn’t get work done for that two years because they were doing this or that that every other new studio does in production. but lets play it on me.

reason escaped you a long time agao when you started rationalizing away every excuse and every evolving narrative on this game.

people who keep an open mind on this game are like me and keep the bullshit in mind while enjoying what the game has to offer or otherwise ignoring all the salesmanship and waiting for it to be somewhere neear complete. which people like you selling it for things it’s not don’t help.

CIG needs to work on that, but you’d see much the same doom, gloom, and denial that anything will ever come out regardless… because too many gamers are thoughtless and self-centered people who fail to consider what goes into making a game.

There are some games that have taken well over a decade to be released.

But those posterboys are things like Duke Nukem Forever, which was an absolute bomb and terrible game.

This is a misunderstanding with development. Long dev times do not equate to “good” games.

In fact, most studios with long dev cycles avoid talking about those cycles until they’re closer to release because the data is clear that promising things and then years going by means lost playerbase in a serious way. SC is evidence for how enthusiasm has only so much rope. SC will launch and will be a good space game. It will launch years after when they could have had millions of players.

Hell, their pre-order is screwing them, long-run, because it is merely consolidating ships in a handful of hangers. People wait 3, 6, 9+ months for the game and then they sell off their purchases at profit when they get sick of waiting. You have hardcore backers who have moved on and sold their whole yards for profits.

SC is ensuring it only had the hardcore of the hardcore who will care about any release. Because they’re years into what was originally a launch plan with no actual end in sight.

I say this every 6-months or so, and I desperately hope there’s real movement on the final product. At this rate they’ll have a full game about when VR/Holo takes over the genre entirely.

This is a misunderstanding with development. Long dev times do not equate to “good” games.

The same can be said about short dev times, which is evident in many modern games, which are rushed out the door in a half finished state.
You simply cannot measure the quality of a game based on the time it takes to develop.

MASSIVELY OVERHEARD

“We had a lot of marketing people saying, don’t call it an MMO. Everyone will think it’s orcs and wizards running around. It’s stale [the MMO genre]. My point is, that’s exactly why we have to own it as an MMO. It is. It’s inspired by EVE Online and Space Station 13. I’m hoping that we can show there are so many areas you can innovate in terms of MMOs.”